Landis Loses His Case And Title

By JULIET MACUR

Published: September 21, 2007

More than a year after winning the 2006 Tour de France, Floyd Landis lost his lengthy, costly and very public doping case yesterday when an arbitration panel upheld charges that he had used performance-enhancing drugs to win the race.

Landis was stripped of his Tour title, becoming the first champion in the history of the race to lose the title because of a doping offense. He has been barred from the sport for two years, retroactive to Jan. 30, 2007.

The arbitrators' 2-to-1 decision, which came four months after a hearing in May that pitted Landis against the United States Anti-Doping Agency, supported initial findings that Landis had synthetic testosterone in his urine during last year's Tour. But the panel also supported some of Landis's claims that the laboratory analyzing the tests made errors, though none grave enough to reverse the findings.

''Landis thought he could use all sorts of expensive means to beat the system, and it didn't work,'' the International Cycling Union president, Pat McQuaid, said in a telephone interview. ''We're very happy with the result because the testing system was put under immense scrutiny by what you would call a celebrated group of lawyers, some of the best in America, and it stood up under that scrutiny.

''Now he can keep the yellow jersey, put it on his wall and dream about it, but Oscar Pereiro is now the winner,'' McQuaid said.

Landis, once the heir apparent to Lance Armstrong, has one chance at taking his title back from Pereiro, the Spaniard who was the runner-up in 2006. He has 30 days to appeal his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That decision would be final.

Landis was devastated when he heard he had lost his case, said his lead lawyer, Maurice Suh, who added that they would discuss this week whether to appeal.

In a statement released yesterday by Suh's office, Landis said: ''This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere. For the panel to find in favor of Usada when, with respect to so many issues, Usada did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case, shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent.''

''It is a victory for clean athletes and those who value clean and honest competition,'' he said.

The doping scandal surrounding Landis is only one of many that have hovered over cycling for years. Before the 2006 Tour, several top riders were barred from the race for being implicated in a doping ring in Spain.

Before this year's Tour, the retired racer Bjarne Riis acknowledged using EPO, an oxygen booster, during his victory in the 1996 Tour. During this year's Tour, several riders were ejected for doping-related offenses. The race winner, Alberto Contador, was then implicated in the Spanish doping ring, which McQuaid said still involved 50 riders, some of whose names have yet to be publicly released.

But when he won the 2006 Tour, Landis was supposed to be the man who would deliver cycling from those kinds of scandals. He was a former Mennonite, a nice guy with a quick wit and a relaxed nature. He was the underdog with a bad hip.

Instead, Landis fell quickly and hard into his own nightmare, which has cost him his reputation, his career and more than $2 million.

Pearl Piatt, a spokeswoman for Suh, said Landis would not be available for comment this week. In the past, though, Landis, 31, has been outspoken about nearly every single step of his case.

He has been active in a public-relations campaign and a contentious legal battle with Usada, which handles doping cases involving American athletes. He has held news conferences and teleconferences. He has spoken at town hall meetings, professing his innocence and going out of his way to point out the flaws in the antidoping system and the way it treats athletes.

Landis talked about his case in his book, ''Positively False.'' He put a PowerPoint presentation on the Internet detailing his case, and asked for his arbitration hearing to be open to the public.

That multiplatform fight against the antidoping agency and the injustices he says are rife in it began not long after Landis tested positive for synthetic testosterone July 20, 2006, after Stage 17 of the Tour. On that day, he gave one of the most memorable performances in the race's history, riding solo over three Alpine passes to set himself up for victory.

His urine sample after that ride was analyzed by the French national doping lab. The tests revealed a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of 11 to 1, nearly three times the limit of 4 to 1 set by the World Anti-Doping Agency. A more sophisticated test also showed traces of synthetic testosterone.

In a bitterly contested nine-day hearing in May, Landis and his lawyers insisted that the French lab that conducted the tests on Landis's urine did not follow WADA's rules. The arbitrators' ruling yesterday agreed with them on some of their points.

The 84-page decision said that there were problems with the way the French lab conducted some of its tests, filled out its paperwork and handled the urine samples, but that none of those problems affected the final result: Landis's urine samples contained testosterone not made by his own body.

Arbitrators wrote that the screening for testosterone to epitestosterone failed to meet international standards. Even so, the presence of testosterone revealed by a second, more-precise test was enough to prove a doping violation.

The panel wrote that Landis's claim of conspiracy by the French lab was untrue. But it said the lab needed to be more fastidious, calling its practices ''sloppy.''

''If such practices continue, it may well be that in the future an error like this could result in the dismissal,'' the decision said.

Christopher Campbell, the arbitrator who dissented, and Landis's lawyers said they were flabbergasted that the lab could get away with so many mistakes.

''In many instances, Mr. Landis sustained his burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,'' wrote Campbell, a former Olympic wrestler. He added that the lab's documents were ''so filled with errors'' that Landis should be found innocent.

Dick Pound, WADA's chairman, could not discuss the decision because of a possible appeal, but he stood by the lab, which was accredited by WADA.

Landis's lawyers, Suh and Howard Jacobs, said in a telephone interview yesterday that athletes went into each case with the odds against them because they had fewer rights than a defendant in a civil or criminal case. Suh added that he thought the discussions that subsequently arose about the system's inadequacies made it worth bringing the case in the first place.

''Ultimately, the case was brought primarily by Floyd to help expose the many problems of this system,'' Suh said.

PHOTOS: Floyd Landis became the first Tour de France winner to lose his title because of a doping offense.(PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANÇOIS LENOIR/REUTERS)(pg. D1); Floyd Landis maintained his innocence. He has 30 days to appeal his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a final decision.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSANDRO TROVATI/ASSOCIATED PRESS)(pg. D6)